Description

This is the first inexpensive edition of the complete Long Course in Principles of Psychology, one of the great classics of modern Western literature and science and the source of the ripest thoughts of America s most important philosopher. As such, it should not be confused with the many abridgements that omit key sections.
The book presents lucid descriptions of human mental activity, with detailed considerations of the stream of thought, consciousness, time perception, memory, imagination, emotions, reason, abnormal phenomena, and similar topics. In its course it takes into account the work of Berkeley, Binet, Bradley, Darwin, Descartes, Fechner, Galton, Green, Helmholtz, Herbart, Hume, Janet, Kant, Lange, Lotze, Locke, Mill, Royce, Schopenhauer, Spinoza, Wundt, and scores of others. It examines contrasting interpretations of mental phenomena, treating introspective analysis, philosophical interpretations, and experimental research.
It remains unsurpassed today as a brilliantly written survey of William James timeless view of psychology."show more

Table of contents

CHAPTER 1
THE SCOPE OF PSYCHOLOGY
Mental Manifestations depend on Cerebral Conditions
Pursuit of ends and choice are the marks of Mind's presence
CHAPTER II
THE FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN
"Reflex, semi-reflex, and voluntary acts"
The Frog's nerve centres
General notion of the hemispheres
Their Education-the Meynert scheme
The phrenological contrasted with the physiological conception
The localization of function in the hemisphere
The motor zone
Motor Aphasia
The sight-centre
Mental blindness
The hearing-centre
Sensory Aphasia
Centres for smell and taste
The touch-centre
Man's Consciousness limited to the hemispheres
The restitution of function
Final correction of the Meynert scheme
Conclusions
CHAPTER III.
ON SOME GENERAL CONDITIONS OF BRAIN-ACTIVITY
The summation of Stimuli
Reaction-time
Cerebral blood-supply
Cerebral Thermometry
Phosphorus and Thought
CHAPTER IV.
HABIT
Due to plasticity of neural matter
Produces ease of action
Diminishes attention
Concatenated performances
Ethical implications and pedagogic maxims
CHAPTER V.
THE AUTOMATON-THEORY
The theory described
Reasons for it
Reasons against it
CHAPTER VI.
THE MIND-STUFF THEORY
Evolutionary Psychology demands a Mind-dust
Some alleged proofs that it exists
Refutation of these proofs
Self-compounding of mental facts is inadmissible
Can states of mind be unconscious?
Refutation of alleged proofs of unconscious thought
Difficulty of stating the connection between mind and brain
The Soul' is logically the least objectionable hypothesis
Conclusion
CHAPTER VII.
THE METHODS AND SNARES OF PSYCHOLOGY
Psychology is a natural Science
Introspection
Experiment
Sources of error
The 'Psychologists fallacy'
CHAPTER VIII.
THE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER THINGS
Time relations : lapses of Consciousness
Locke v. Descartes
The 'unconsciousness' of hysterics not genuine
Minds may split into dissociated parts
Space-relations : the Seat of the Soul
Cognitive relations
The Psychologist's point of view
"Two kinds of knowledge, acquaintance and knowledge about"
CHAPTER IX.
THE STREAM OF THOUGHT
Consciousness tends to the personal form
It is in constant change
It is sensibly continuous
Substantive' and 'transitive' parts of Consciousness
Feelings of relation
Feelings of tendency
The 'fringe' of the object
The feeling of rational sequence
Thought possible in any kind of mental material
Thought and language
Consciousness is cognitive
The word Object
Every cognition is due to one integral pulse of thought
Diagrams of Thought's stream
Thought is always selective
CHAPTER X
THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF
The Empirical Self or Me
Its constituents
The material self
The Social Self
The Spiritual Self
Difficulty of apprehending Thought as a purely spiritual activity
Emotions of Self
Rivalry and conflict of one's different selves
Their hierarchy
What Self we love in 'Self-love'
The Pure Ego
The verifiable ground of the sense of personal identity
The passing Thought is the only Thinker which Psychology requires
Theories of Self-consciousness:
1) The theory of the Soul
2) The Associationist theory
3) The Transcendentalist theory
The mutations of the Self
Insane delusions
Alternative selves
Mediumships or possessions
Summary
CHAPTER XI.
ATTENTION
Its neglect by English psychologists
Description of it
To how many things can we attend at once?
Wundt's experiments on displacement of date of impressions simultaneously attend to
Personal equation
The varieties of attention
Passive attention
Voluntary attention
Attention's effect on sensation; on discrimination; on recollection; on reaction-time
The neural process in attention:
1) Accommodation of sense-organ
2) Preperception
Is voluntary attention a resultant or a force?
The effort to attend can be conceived as a resultant
Conclusion
Acquired Inattention
CHAPTER XII.
CONCEPTION
The sense of sameness
Conception defined
Conceptions are unchangeable
Abstract ideas
Universals
The conception 'of the same' is not the 'same state' of mind
CHAPTER XIII.
DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON
Locke on discrimination
Martineau ditto
Simultaneous sensations originally fuse into one object
The principle of mediate comparison
Not all differences are differences of composition
The conditions of discrimination
The sensation of differences
The transcendentalist theory of the perception of differences uncalled for
The process of analysis
The process of abstraction
The improvement of discrimination by practice
Its two causes
Practical interests limit our discrimination
Reaction-time after discrimination
The perception of likeness
The magnitude of differences
The measurement of criminative sensibility : Weber's law
Fechner's interpretation of this as the psycho-physic law
Criticism thereof
CHAPTER XIV.
ASSOCIATION
The problem of the connection of our thoughts
It depends on mechanical conditons
"Association is of objects thought-of, not of 'ideas'"
The rapidity of association
The 'law of contiguity'
The elementary law of association
Impartial redintegration
Ordinary or mixed association
The law of interest
Association by similarity
Elementary expression of the difference beshow more

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